Research help from the Beryl Ivey Library at Brescia University College

Tips for Searching Primary Source Databases

There will be cases where you need to use primary sources for an assignment, whether you are
in the sciences, social sciences or humanities.

As a quick refresher, defined by Western
University, primary sources are “documents or physical objects
written or created during the time under study. Such sources were present during
an experience or time period, and offer an inside view of a particular event.”

For those involved in humanities or social sciences, that includes objects
such as diaries, letters, photographs and government documents. Whereas those
in the sciences are looking for original research articles.

Today we will focus on some search strategies for students
in the humanities since there is often more work involved in finding the right
primary source.

Let’s say you are a history student working on a paper about
the MS St. Louis ship that left Hamburg for Cuba in 1939 and you were
interested in the accounts of any survivors of the voyage. Right off the bat,
you may know you want to find sources such as diary entries, newspaper
articles, or letters that give a first hand account of the journey.

But wait! Before you start searching for sources, you’re going to want to do a little “presearch research” in order to find some key information that will help guide your research. That means you’ll want to find out of there were any key figures involved, dates, locations, and other pertinent information.

The next step is selecting a database that relates to your
topic and is most likely to provide the information you are seeking. To find a
databases with primary sources can feel a little overwhelming if you don’t know
what to look for. Have no fear! We know it’s not easy, so we’ve taken the guess
work out by putting together some research guides that include primary sources.

Brescia offers a research guide with a tab for primary
sources for the following programs. We recommend checking them out.

Additionally, Western has a great research guide for
students studying history that include digital
sources for different areas of the world.

Another hint? Check out some of Western’s research guides
to find more primary sources not listed above. You’ll note that different
history courses will have their own research guide, which can provide a great
number of primary source databases!

So what do we know about our topic that will help us get
started? Well, we know that it was called the MS St Louis and it left Hamburg,
Germany on May 13, 1939 for Havana, Cuba with 936 Jewish refugees who were
later denied entry with the exception of 22 passengers. The captain was Gustav Schröder and the journey itself was called “The
Voyage of the Damned”.

As an example for our particular search, we’re going to visitProQuest Historical Newspapers, which covers articles from established newspapers beginning in the 18th Century.

When you first visit ProQuest, you can opt to look at a list
of the databases available to search by selecting the Database button at the
top of the page. This will allow you to check off specific databases that are
most relevant to your search.

We selected all of the databases that began with ProQuest
Historical Newspapers, which included The Atlanta Constitution, The Boston
Globe, and Chicago Tribune. See below for an example of what these selections
would look like from a user’s perspective in ProQuest.

Using the Advanced Search, you can combine your keywords to create a search query. For example, we used “MS St Louis”, “Jewish Refugee”, “Jewish Immigrant”, and “1939” in a general search.

You can keep in general, like we have above, or get more
specific depending on your topic by using the dropdown menus. Remember that you
are never stuck with just one search query if it is not producing desirable
results. Tweaking or adding in new words can make all the difference!

Menu option one: select AND, OR, or NOT to limit or refine a
search. AND will include it in the search, OR will look for one keyword or
another keyword if the previous is unavailable in a document, and NOT will not
produce and results that include that keyword.

Menu option two: select from the dropdown to refine where
you want to search. For example, ANYWHERE will pull from anywhere within a
document, ABSTRACT will only produce documents that feature a keyword in the
abstract, DOCUMENT TEXT will only search within the text of a document, not the
title, and so on.

With this search, we received 335 results! To further refine it, you may want to select from the left hand side the document type, a specific newspaper, the year, and more, which will alter the number of results.

As you can see, we had success with our initial search
query, finding a news article interviewing survivors of the MS St Louis.

Other primary source databases may not be as intuitive to search, or the possibilities within their search bar may be limiting because your findings are based on what they have available to them. For example, a database like the North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories has a wealth of rich information, but availability and relation to your topic is dependent upon what they have stored in their database. With these databases, it is very beneficial to have specific names and dates pertaining to your topic to help with the search, otherwise it can feel like you’re looking for a needle in the haystack.